Dry
by DreadfulStar
Summary: AU where Speed and Lucy cannot break the glass in time. After X steals VIC from Speed, he learns the consequences of pride.


His heart began to sound like gunshots within the confines of his mind. As the water lapped away at the top of the containment unit, the air left with grace through the sealed vent. With only one last leap toward the vent, he managed to take in a full lungful of air as he felt the remaining space fill with the death sentence. At first, being fully submerged felt like a rush of wind. Everything jetted around his face as the water filtration continues to cycle through. The water stung his eyes and the raspy pain of discomfort began to burrow into his sinuses. Thus was no simple dive, no simple dead man's float… he was drowning.

Drowning, as defined by the great gift of literature, is often the romantic gesture a hero or damsel is subjected to, like Ophelia as her heart festered with sorrow and grew still amongst the lily pads. Drowning is the great gateway into oblivion as taken by Virginia Woolf, her coat anchored down with the emotional baggage of the decision. The grandiose of these suicides, fictional and fate, were all the twisted paths of ill fated decision.

He refused to see it that way, as a suicide, because it simply was _not_. Yet? Is suicide not one being responsible for their demise? Had his temper of fragile inferiority and ego taken him down this road? He did cause it. He did. Now, his breath ran stagnant inside a chest that ached and spasmed.

In that moment, he felt like a spectacle. He knew at the doors, his brother and his friend were working away at the door. He felt the urge to look over for them, but instinct made him tilt his head up. What a pathetic way to die…

When he was an only child, things came to him through no means of sharing. The concept of not being chosen for something aimed within his family? Shattering. He spent years building a persona of arrogant showmanship and skill only to be suddenly confronted with an equal with no such thing as a social image. Suddenly, he realized what he prided himself in attention could suddenly fall to the ground dead and discarded so easily. He won trophies one after another. He won races. Now he simply was second, for the first on the scene as well between him and Speed. Considering the realization, he couldn't call himself fragile but he could admit he was wrong. His actions were of ill intent. Stealing and pride.

Pride, the grandest of the sins, fell short of everything. Without the necessity of feeling less in some way, one would not lift up their ego to mask it. To be frank, his obsession with image and privilege only hinted at a critical character flaw. X felt replaced and worthless in the shadow of someone he barely knew yet needed to protect. These duties of brotherhood and family were thrust upon him. He was never ready. All these fronts he set up so carefully and maintained with finesse fell apart around his brother. His aggressive annoyance of no longer being first in line got to him.

Now he was submerged in barely room temperature water, watching the strobes of oxygen loss flicked before his eyes.

 _Thwunk_.

 _Thwunk._

His attention jolted. In the surprise, X let in a short gasp with a shudder. Lungs, as one finds out under water, do not simply let water in. Instead they swell and sweat thick mucus to block any passage. As helpful as it seems, the pain disoriented him only further as it happened again.

 _Thwunk._

Oh. Speed, X now noticed, bashed at the unit with a bent piece of metal. Each strike cracked the glass but nothing inside even dared to leak out. Tiny, minute fractures began spiderwebbing in hazy circles around the point of impact.

With another spasm and shudder, the hits were a melody of destruction. The water ran deep with striking reds and yellows and violets as X's vision halted. All tension subsided. For once, his lungs let in water. As useless as he pretended philosophy was to him, he knew the truth in the fact that in death, we regret all that we were and were not. He regretted his insecurity, his persistent pride, his attitude… he regretted he was not a giver, a listener, an empathetic friend… would he change? Could someone change after stitching their social roles so deeply into the lining of the psyche that they felt the heft of the mental quilt suffocate them with each mistake? Drowning, now an opportunity for change, tempted him for a final deep and desperate breath.

All was still.


End file.
